DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 108, 11 July 2005

Welcome to this year's 28th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The recently released Fedora Core 4 has been getting some bad press lately - what are the reasons? The security problems plaguing Debian sarge in recent weeks have been solved, while Ubuntu's increasing impact on the world of Linux distribution has received more momentum by the launch of a US$10 million Ubuntu Foundation. Also in this issue - we interview Jean-Philippe Guillemin, the lead developer of Minislack and introduce three new Asian distributions - AsianLinux, OpenLX (both from India) and Niigata Linux (from Japan). Happy reading!

As is the case with just about every major distribution release, some users are extremely pleased, while others wish they'd never upgraded. The recently released Fedora Core 4 is no exception. Many seem to be happy about the updated applications that have made it into the latest version, including upgrades to GCC 4, GNOME 2.10 and KDE 3.4, as well as the newly added official support for the PowerPC architectures. We have tested Fedora Core briefly and found it to be a solid release, although we missed some of the applications that have been "relegated" to the "extras" repository to save space on the official Fedora CDs.

But not everybody is happy. The most recent issue of Linux Format awarded Fedora Core 4 only four stars out of ten (in contrast, the same issue gave Debian 3.1 eight stars). The reviewers have found the release somewhat unexciting and, with the exception of Xen, lacking any major new features. They also complained about the absence of graphical configuration tools, a feature that has existed in Mandriva and SUSE for a long time. As such, they argue that Fedora Core 4 is a distribution not particularly suitable for those new to Linux.

What are your experiences? If you are a Fedora user, do you consider Core 4 a greatly improved release compared to the previous version? And if you don't normally use Fedora, but decided to give its latest release a quick spin, what were your impressions? Please discuss below.

Sarge security problems solved

Following our report on Debian's security problems in last week's DistroWatch Weekly, we are pleased to bring you an update on the issue. According to this press release, the Debian security support has been fully restored: "The Debian project confirms that the security infrastructure for both the current release Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (alias sarge) and the former release 3.0 (alias woody) is working again. The security team is now able to provide updates on a regular basis again. There were several issues with the security infrastructure after the release of sarge, that lead to the Debian security team being unable to issue updates to vulnerable packages. These issues have been fully resolved, and the infrastructure is working correctly again."

Unfortunately, our report displeased some of the Debian developers. Steve Langasek has emailed us to say that "although one architecture (out of 11) was not yet picking security updates up correctly for sarge at the time that article was written, this is (unfortunately) nothing extraordinary in the history of security support for Debian; and while this problem was still being resolved, the Debian security team had issued three security advisories last week and has issued several more since then. Perhaps you could clarify for your readers that this represents an obstacle that has already been overcome, not an ongoing failure of Debian to provide security support for sarge?"

Besides complaining about DistroWatch's reporting, Steve Langasek also had some harsh words for Martin Schulze, Debian's press officer: "I've watched with growing dismay as Debian's press officer continued to blog prognostications of doom for the future of Debian security, which have done nothing but whet the press's appetite for a story of impending disaster. I find this kind of blogging to be irresponsible in the extreme; not only does it not help fix the problems, it doesn't even help users make informed decisions because it doesn't contain salient facts."

Of course, none of the Debian developers noticed that, besides bringing up sarge security problems, last week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly also informed readers about a US$420 donation to the Debian project....

US$10 million Ubuntu Foundation launched

As widely reported in the media, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux and Canonical Limited (the sponsor of Ubuntu) have announced the creation of Ubuntu Foundation with the initial funding commitment of US$10 million: "The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members to ensure that Ubuntu will remain fully supported for an extended period of time, and continue to produce new releases of the distribution. As a first step, the Foundation announces that Ubuntu version 6.04, due for release in April 2006, will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server."

This surprise move will likely result in further adoption of the increasingly popular distribution and should also heat up the competition on the enterprise Linux scene, where the only serious contenders are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and, to a lesser extent, Novell's range server and desktop Linux products.

The Ubuntu announcement has also made reference to DistroWatch: "Ubuntu has quickly become a leading distribution in the free software world, taking the #1 place in DistroWatch popularity rankings over all timescales which are published. The distribution focuses on usability, security and stability on desktops and servers, and on making free software widely available for individuals and organisations who are ready to switch from proprietary platforms, such as Microsoft Windows."

And while covering this ambitious move and a radical event affecting the Linux distribution scene, it is perhaps appropriate to comment on some of the increasing amount of anti-Ubuntu propaganda that has started to appear on some Linux forums and web sites. We don't know who is behind some of these comments which go as far as accuse Mark Shuttleworth of being a rich and ruthless businessman whose only interest is to make money out of Linux, and that much of the positive coverage of Ubuntu Linux in the media is due to the generous disposition of his millions, rather than the quality of the Ubuntu distribution.

Firstly, Mark Shuttleworth is not a businessman - he is, in fact, a programmer and a hacker who had a right idea at a right time and who benefited tremendously from open source software. Secondly, Ubuntu and Canonical have never, to our knowledge, advertised their Linux distribution on any web site. They certainly haven't sponsored DistroWatch in any way and the only reason that Ubuntu tops our popularity charts is through having thousands of satisfied customers and through good old-fashioned word of mouth. Naturally, there is no such thing as "perfect distribution" and Ubuntu Linux is not a panacea either, but it has certainly found the right vibe among many computer users. Whether you like it or not, we will be hearing much more about Ubuntu in the coming years.

Interview: Jean-Philippe Guillemin, Minislack

Interview: Jean-Philippe Guillemin, Minislack

The Minislack distribution is one of those projects that might sound unexciting and short of innovation at first, but once you install it, you are likely to have very good first impressions. Initiated by Jean-Philippe Guillemin, this one-year old distribution has recently started to receive some positive media coverage (see this review at DesktopLinux as an example). We asked Jean-Philippe a few questions about Minislack and this is what he has to say.

DW: Jean-Philippe, thank you very much for your time. Please tell us about yourself. How old are you? Where do you live? What do you do for living? When and why did you start using Linux?

JP: I'm 33 years old, I live in Nantes, France, and I work as security engineer for Telindus. I first tried Linux (Slackware) in 1996, often using it for coding, but I really started using Linux as my exclusive operating system in 1999 (Mandrake and then Redhat). I moved back to Slackware in 2002 and felt in love with it. This love story is not finished...

DW: How was the Minislack idea conceived? Slackware is a popular base on which many distributions are based, why did you feel the need to create another one?

JP: In the beginning of 2004, I was just curious to see how far I could go building a Linux CD that would be optimised for my personal needs, nothing original :) My goal was to have a development environment that would be simple and complete, so that I could install it on any computer very effectively. Thus I started to remove server-related packages, and to replace the kernel with the 2.6.x version that I had been using for a few months. I kept almost all development libs and "base system" tools. Now the Minislack concept has evolved a little bit. The main ideas are to keep it simple and fast, and provide a user-friendly Desktop environment with just one mainstream application for one given task.

DW: What are the key differences between Slackware proper and Minislack? Any important issues a user needs to know when moving between the two distributions? Any compatibility issues? Can standard Slackware packages (such as those found at LinuxPackages.net) be installed on Minislack?

JP: Slackware is to Minislack the same as Red Hat was to Mandrake in the beginning. If we consider the "base system" (core libs, and GNU tools) Minislack is mostly a striped down version of Slackware, main differences being:

kernel 2.6

Reiser4 file system

the application selection/adds

GNOME libraries

optimisations of the desktop and user environment

a simple network package manager (netpkg)

a simple firewall service (rc.netfilter)

I personally use Slackware Linux for critical server missions, and I use Minislack for coding or multimedia. Anyway, most Slackware packages are supported under Minislack. LinuxPackages.org is a great source of packages, their testing/validation process is very efficient.

DW: Packages in Minislack are managed with the "netpkg" utility. How does this tool compare with Slackware's "pkgtool"?

JP: Minislack uses pkgtool as its package manager. Netpkg is just a network based interface to pkgtool (installpkg/upgradepkg to be exact). Netpkg is still new (last version is 0.92). It can't be compared yet with slapt-get or slackpkg, as netpkg is a simpler tool and still in active development.

DW: Minislack maintains its own "current" directory with continuously updated packages. Are these packages considered stable or experimental? Do you build them yourself or are these packages accepted from Slackware's current branch without modifications?

JP: The "current" repository is not the stable distribution (although all "current" packages are first tested and that this repository provides bug-fixes), the stable distribution is provided as ISO/CD download and is tested during at least 15 days before release. The "current" repository is new (May 2005) and started when netpkg was released. There's also a "stable" repository that provides the same packages as the ISO distribution.

Minislack packages come from 3 sources:

compiled and packaged by the Minislack team

Slackware Linux, with modifications in some of them (in this case they are renamed)

the Gware project (for GNOME libraries), which is really a great and "non-intrusive" GNOME distribution

DW: What is the target group of Minislack?

JP: Minislack was primary designed for experienced Linux users and software developers, but I was surprised that beginners often find it easy to use, so I don't know...

DW: Minislack has been growing surprisingly fast over the past few months - what do you think is the main factor behind it? Are you surprised by the success of your project?

JP: The support provided by the users themselves is, in my opinion, the main reason for this rise! Minislack users provide a really great support on the forums, and ... yes, I'm surprised.

How many developers work on the distribution?

JP: The main Minislack team includes 6 members, with about 10 regular testers.

DW: What are the long-term plans for Minislack? Any interesting features you are working on? What can we look forward to in the coming months?

JP: We are going to keep working on the objectives : simpler, faster and easier to use. I think that there will also be some child projects like a live CD, and/or an x64 version, at a later time. The main objectives will remain unchanged, Minislack will only gain some maturity.

DW: When is the next Minislack release due? Are you following a roadmap or are release decisions based on other factors?

JP: I think that our actual release frequency is a bit too high. The next release will be this summer. It will mostly be a big software update, the main new feature is Gnome System Tools. Since we now have our own network update system to provide urgent intermediate bug-fixes, this makes it possible to release a stable version of Minislack every 3 - 4 months.

The inaugural release of grml-small, labelled as "Knoppix for sysadmins", is now available: "Initial release of grml-small, a very small version of the grml-system. Notice that there are several hacks to reduce the ISO size, so you won't find documentation and manpages on the ISO. grml-small provides support for booting via USB, see here for details. Kernel is based on vanilla kernel 2.6.12 including several patches (MPPC/MPPE, Reiser4, SquashFS,...) but, compared with the normal grml system, the kernel features have been reduced. See here for more details. To fit on a 50MB ISO the software list has been reduced of course, see section 'Debian-Information' on this page for more details, there you can find the dpkg-list too." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.

Trustix Secure Linux 3.0

Trustix Secure Linux 3.0 has been released: "Trustix, developers of the world's most secure Linux, today announce the most secure operating system ever with the advent of Trustix Secure Linux 3.0. TSL's rapidly expanding new user base has identified a wide range of possible improvements which have now been implemented and made available in this release. Foremost amongst these is the new installer 'Viper' which boasts the ability to poll the latest updates during the installation process. Other additions to the system include X.org X11 libraries, FreeRadius support, easy PXE installs, Mini CD and Net CD versions of the OS, enhanced hardware detection, installation on RAID and logical volumes...." Read the rest of the press release for more information.

Astaro Security Linux 6.0

Astaro Security Linux 6.0 has been released: "Astaro is pleased to announce the availability of the Astaro Security Linux V6 GA. Astaro Security Linux V6 adds many new capabilities like improved protection for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications, increased protection from 'zero-day attacks,' and support for the Linux 2.6 Kernel as well as enhanced configuration and reporting options that improve the flexibility and ease of management. Key features include: transparent firewall mode; time-based packet filter and surf protection; policy-based routing; support of Linux kernel 2.6; SIP proxy; anomaly-based intrusion protection; Novell eDirectory support." More details are available in the release announcement.

AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.1

AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.1 has been released: "AGNULA/DeMuDI 1.2.1, the Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution for audio and music, has been released. This release is the second of the 1.2.x series, and sports a complete integration with Debian, using the Debian Sarge Installer and the CDD (Custom Debian Distributions) concept. Instructions on how to download and install it can be found here and a list of frequently asked questions here. We hope you enjoy AGNULA/DeMuDi! Please report your impressions on our mailing lists or with the issue tracking system. Bug reports as well as hints and suggestions are always welcome!" See the complete release announcement for more information.

StartCom 4.0.4 MultiMedia Edition

A multimedia edition of StartCom Enterprise Linux 4.0 has been released: "Based on its Enterprise brother 'Barak' (StartCom Enterprise Linux AS-4.0.0), the new MultiMedia Edition (ML-4.0.4) from StartCom may make lots of noise. Produced for the demanding home user, 'Raam' is designed to be an all-in-one MultiMedia platform, including audio and video entertainment, audio and video production center, recording studio and more. ... The music production section offers some outstanding applications like Rosegarden, Audacity, Muse and many, many sound manipulating effect tools, synthesizers, samplers, sequencers. It can perform as a complete Recording Studio and its use requires quite some knowledge and training." Find more details in the official press release.

Linux From Scratch 6.1

Linux From Scratch (LFS) 6.1 has been released: "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS 6.1. This release includes a large number of package upgrades (including Linux 2.6.11.12, GCC 3.4.3, glibc 2.3.4) and security fixes (including the recently disclosed zlib vulnerability). It also includes a large amount of editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text. You can read the book online, or download to read locally." See the release announcement on the project's news page and check out the full changelog for further details.

AsianLinux. AsianLinux is an Indian Linux distribution which aims to promote Linux and open source. Based on Fedora Core, it comes with several enhancements, as well as additional multimedia and development tools; these include Firefox with Flash, Java Runtime, Kaffeine and Real Player plugins, various graphics manipulation applications, and CAD design software.

Niigata Linux. Niigata Linux is a Fedora-based Japanese Linux distribution designed as a web application environment for web development with Apache and PostgreSQL.

OpenLX. OpenLX is a Linux distribution made in India. It is based on Fedora Core with updated packages and many user-friendly enhancements, such as complete multimedia capabilities, support for 6 Indian languages, Java SDK and an extra application CD. OpenLX comes in two editions - a single-CD "Desktop" edition and a 5-CD "Enterprise" edition.

New on the waiting list

Asterisk@Home. The Asterisk@Home project enables the home user to quickly set up a VOIP Asterisk PBX. A web GUI makes configuration and operation easy. The live CD also includes an xPL (home automation) interface for easy interaction with other devices in the home.

Elive. Elive, or Enlightenment liveCD, is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution with the Enlightenment window manager version 16 and 17

Insigne GNU/Linux. Insigne GNU/Linux is a Brazilian Linux distribution based on Fedora Core.

Musix GNU+Linux. Musix GNU+Linux is a Debian-based Linux live CD containing a collection of Free Software packages for musicians and audio enthusiasts. The distribution's default language is Spanish, but English is also supported.

1 • LXF's review on Fedora and Debian (by d00m3d on 2005-07-12 10:10:58 GMT from China)
I also read the current of LXF. FC4 does lack excitement, but 4 stars seems...On the contrary, Debian Sarge also have fatal mistakes during initial release.

Although I am a Debian supporter, I think the reviews seems a little bit biased.2 • No subject (by enloop on 2005-07-12 10:12:00 GMT from United States)
Fedora desn't warrant criticism for lack of grapical configuration tools, especially for desktop use. I've used every version and do not recall ever needing to open a terminal to get that job done. That's stands in contrast to my last use of Debian (3.0), whose configuration tools had a decidedly incomplete feel. E.g., the lack of a GUI tool to turn off unwanted services. Fedora has had that for a long time.

In addition, Fedora explicitly states that neophytes should probably look elsewhere. Criticism that it isn't appropriate for newbies is misplaced. However, the fact that Fedora has eliminated so much of the pain of installation and use is a testimony to the team that produces it.3 • fc4 (by bruce zarnsy on 2005-07-12 10:33:19 GMT from United States)
my main distro is ubuntu but i also recently installed fc4on another drive.i think it has a very polished, profesionallook and feel.more so than fc2 or fc3.4 • debian configuration (by fester on 2005-07-12 10:35:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
"the lack of a GUI tool to turn off unwanted services."

There's always the KDE system configuration apps. And since most inexperienced users will have big graphical desktops installed these should be available.5 • What problem with Fedora 4? (by Michael on 2005-07-12 10:49:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Linux Format giving them a bad review scarcely amounts to a problem. I'd say the way Debian handles it's media realtions is a much bigger problem. When someone gives me $420, I send them a thank you note. Go on, try it ;)6 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-07-12 10:50:22 GMT from United States)
WHAX beta 3 is out now, not just 2 :-)

http://iwhax.nethttp://iwhax.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=117 • No subject (by Luciano on 2005-07-12 11:11:42 GMT from Italy)
Fedora Core 4 finally allowed me to use Linux on my HP zv5000 laptop in an effective way. So my choice depends on hardware support. I experienced many issues with Ubuntu Hoary, SUSE 9.2/9.3, Slackware and others. I miss YaST from SUSE and I don't like how Fedora manages Windows partitions (no NTFS support and no support for FAT32 encodings, so non-ASCII filenames are scrambled). Also, I feel that it's too early to switch to GCC 4, since many programs don't compile yet. Good release anyway, very polished. I'd give 4 stars, but out of 58 • Fedora Core 4 (by Jack Malmostoso on 2005-07-12 11:12:29 GMT from Switzerland)
I am a RedHat/Fedora enthusiast since RH7.1. I constantly upgraded my linuxbox from RH8 up to FC4, and I always found it perfectly usable and with plenty of good GUI tools (the system-config-* stuff).I was so impressed with FC4 (actually it made me switch back to Gnome, since I left it for XFCE in FC2, it was too painfully slow on my PIII-550/512MB) that I decided to wipe out my old installation to start fresh, and I am sure I did the right thing. My system is fast and responsive, and I am using a 2005 operating system on a 2000 machine. This is honestly impressive.

FC4 is a very good distribution that is perfectly suitable for everybody, from the newbie to the power user. I think we fall back to that old question of "what is a newbie distro": I think that a distro built to mimic windows is not useful at all, because a newbie will not learn the basics that stand behind linux. And no, I don't care about "we have to conquer the Joe User", because the Joe User will never Never NEVER learn to use linux. Never. Unless he takes half an hour and learn a couple of useful things without screaming around "l33n0ks suckz".9 • For my system (by Alex on 2005-07-12 11:15:24 GMT from Romania)
Fedora deserves 0 stars as it never even finishes the damn install. It always freezes at about 25%. And I've already tried it on 3 different systems and checked the media. Arghhh!10 • I like FC 4 (by Stefan on 2005-07-12 11:32:23 GMT from Germany)
I recently have installed FC 4 on my notebook after many trials of other distros like suse,debian & family I found it the easiest installation with less problems. Its a bit sad that NTFS support and multi-media support was not build in but it was easily installable with instructions available in the internet.

I tried Debian but it was not possible for a newbie like me to configure it in a way I could work with. The instruction in the web are often not easy to understand and there is much more effort and hacking of configurations necessary...

So one thing what is unfair is stating that a graphical configuration tool like Yast is necessary for FC. First it is not really necessary, second Debian lacks it as well so how got it 8 points? Besides: FC4 is much more up to date... so for certain the points are not given for usability but for political reasons11 • Debian Pure (by Robert on 2005-07-12 11:50:05 GMT from United States)
For Debian lovers and noobies looking to try Debian, Debian Pure 0.2 was released last week!

www.debianpure.com12 • Fedora Core 4 rocks (by Anonymous on 2005-07-12 11:52:15 GMT from United States)
Fedora core 4 really rocks. Sure there might be issues but I havent run into any and its really well performing and nice to use. No idea why people complain about it. I consider the review to be quite bad13 • @enloop (by Debslack on 2005-07-12 11:59:03 GMT from Singapore)
Why compare Debian 3.0 with FC4, why not Debian 3.1 with FC4? Won't the latter be a fairer comparison? Otherwise it would also be fair to say e.g. compare RH 4.2 Biltmore with Debian 3.1 Sarge right? ;-) I suppose the reviewers had different criterion when reviewing the 2 distros.

Debian has always had this reputation of being a very spartan distro when it comes to GUIfied installation and configuration utilities and thus a most "n00b13 unfriendly" distro. I think the reveiwers knew and accepted that. They were perhaps thus surprised to see "some" effort actually been made to correct this "shortcoming" by developing the Debian Installer (D-I) which makes installing Sarge but a walk in the park literally when compared to Hamm or Slink. I may be wrong but I suspect those who reviewed FC had this feeling that since FC draws its heritage from Red Hat - the market leader in commercial GNU/Linux, it should at least continue if not expand on the "GUIfication" of the distro.

Hmm maybe the reviewers held wrong assumptions eh?14 • Ubuntu wears fedora out (by Ed Jason on 2005-07-12 12:03:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am very pro-Ubuntu (and open to any bribes) I have it on two home machines. There is nothing wrong with Fedora - except it is semi-commercial. So do you support the distro that sends you free disks for you and your friends that works well or wear yesterdays chapeau?

Fedora is just Macrosift in the making (nothing wrong with that - they are good people, with a great distro and that applies to Microsoft Linux too)

The reason Ubuntu does so well is because it is boring. The installation works. The desktop works. The installer works. That is why my main distro is Puppy Linux. It is frisky.

PS. Is Distrowatch brilliant or what? Yes! So it has ads (semi-commercial) but does it have integrity? Sure seems that way.15 • Fedora Core 4 (by istoyanov on 2005-07-12 12:04:52 GMT from Bulgaria)
I decided to try FC 4, but the experience was a really strong disappointment -- this distro "featured" a buggy display driver that rendered my install absolutely *unusable*! OTOH Debian 3.1 works fantastic :)

And *thanks*, Ladislav, for the extraordinary site and fine reading stuff!!!16 • Underground Desktop? (by J. Gabriel on 2005-07-12 12:06:33 GMT from United States)
There is a link to Underground Desktop in the select distribution area but no information.. Is UD on the upcomming releases list?

Also, noobs should wait for the blag release of FC4 with all the multimedia stuff built in. They (the Brits) do a great job, although there icon set is a little scary..

Regards,JG17 • Ubuntu's detractors (by utabintarbo at 2005-07-12 12:06:43 GMT from United States)
There seems to be a prevalent attitude in the Linux world that success is a Bad Thing. Everybody hates M$ for whatever reason. Perhaps that is what drove them to Linux, and that's fine. But now I see an awful lot of vitriol directed at Red Hat and Ubuntu because they are at the top of their markets. Why is that?

I'm missing new additions oder a further development of the PackageManager. It has'nt changed since Redhat 8.0 yet. Make a comparisonwith Yast of Suse or rpmdrake of Mandriva (I know, it had beenmentioned in the Article above.). Further a lot of tools are missinglike mp3, xine, ntfs etc. are missing and have to be installed after.

Please don't mix up. The reviews in LXF69 is NOT a comparison between Debian 3.0 and FC4. LXF69 includes 2 reviews, one for Debian3.1 and the other for FC4.20 • FC4 (by HB on 2005-07-12 12:23:32 GMT from United States)
I liked FC3 and in fact, use it on a production machine. HOWEVER, with downloading FC4, I could never get a disk to meet the checksum. I must have tried the download three times from three different servers in the US, all with the same failure on checking the disk during installation. If I tried to install anyway, the install would just fail. Anyone else run into this problem?21 • @HB (by Jack Malmostoso on 2005-07-12 12:31:25 GMT from Switzerland)
I thought the same "hey all iso's checksum are wrong". Then I read the installation instructions, and figured that *SHA1SUM* is different from *MD5SUM*.

Take a look at this ;)22 • FC4 (by LinuxISO.co.uk on 2005-07-12 12:51:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
We use Fedora Core 3 & 4 across 50 servers here, I use it on my Laptop, no problems at all. I am no newbie though (I run a LUG).As for GUI configuration, just click the 'Desktop' button at the top, it is all there.A lot of Fedora Core 4's new features were more background things, such as a huge leap from MySQL 3.23 -> 4.1 and PHP 4.3 -> 5, which if you use these (as I do) it makes a big difference.Its installer still has issues that haven't been fixed yet, especially media check and I've never had plain sailing with the x86_64 edition (mainly due to 32bit and 64bit packages having the same name in the RPM database).Much respect to Ubuntu, it still has a little way to go, but they have gone a long way in a short amount of time.23 • Re: Underground Desktop? (by Anonymous on 2005-07-12 12:57:20 GMT from Italy)
"There is a link to Underground Desktop in the select distribution area but no information.. Is UD on the upcomming releases list?"

No, it's alreary there:

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=underground24 • bring back the mondays (by crawancon on 2005-07-12 13:01:37 GMT from United States)
first off, getting through monday without my DW fix was ROUGH.second, alot of comparisons between debian and FC. debating over two major distro's just doesn't suit me too well. i'd rather read about the comparisons of stability/usability of minislack to slax or other smaller/lesser known distro's. give them some (more) time in the spotlight. FC and Deb-Ian get enough news and attention. :-Pand finally third..on a less professional note; grml, kanotix, and Helix == life savers.25 • Lesser known distros (by LinuxISO.co.uk on 2005-07-12 13:06:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
The problem with lesser known distros is they don't tend to be as feature rich / as stable / as well put together as many of the larger distros. Hence why many of the lesser known ones are lesser known.26 • Mandriva next release (by Leo on 2005-07-12 13:08:42 GMT from United States)
Guys/Gals

Any news on the Mandriva front ? We haven't seen any cooker beta release for the next Mandriva ! (it's way past due) It should be very exciting if they merge changes from conectiva and get some usability improvements from the Lyvoris (was it lycoris ??) recent hire/buyout.

CheersLeo27 • Ice cube (by AQ on 2005-07-12 13:27:35 GMT from United States)
"Joe User will never Never NEVER learn to use linux"

Of course, in my interactions with Joe User, they haven't even learned to use windows.

I'm really enjoying Fedora Core 4... though its improvements over 3 aren't that visible, except that it is much more stable, and obviously the new gnome is an improvement. From what I can tell, for me the up2date tool is completely broken. Not that much of a problem since I use both yum and synaptic when I need to.

About the Debian issue here... I think Ladislav took what they wrote the wrong way, at least from these clips he's shared with us. I don't exactly believe that was harsh criticism which they leveled. Ladislav appears to be the antagonist in this situation. Taken altogether, it isn't really that big a deal.

Rock on Minislack! I am one of the people who simply love the diversification of linux... especially since it basically guarentees that we won't have one universal implementation which is easily open to attack. Freedom is always the best defense to any attack, not illusions of security from authoritarian sources.

"Fedora deserves 0 stars as it never even finishes the damn install. It always freezes at about 25%. And I've already tried it on 3 different systems and checked the media. Arghhh!"

If you are positive you don't have a bad burn, you might try this. Switch off your power supply at the back of your system (there should actually be a switch on your actual power supply) and then unplug your entire system for a few seconds and then plug it back in and turn it on. I have found that if I don't do this, the Bios of the motherboard retains some memory in its CMOS that messes with installations and boot-ups of other systems. If you dual boot between windows and fedora (or any linux for that matter) you should always power down and unplug it after using Windows and wanting to boot into Linux. This keeps the host names of the previous session from messing with your next session. The same would be true if you were using knoppix and wanted to reboot to Fedora.. the hostnames clash and you will notice your Fedora acting like a slug. So either that will help you or it won't... but the only time I've seen a fedora disk hang is when I forgot to completely shutdown the computer, unplug it and then restart it.28 • Up2Date + Open Source Software (by LinuxISO.co.uk on 2005-07-12 13:39:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
That was something else I was going to comment on, Up2date was working fine in Test 3, no idea why it is so broken in the final release. But I always use Dag's Apt and Synaptic (don't like Yum either but that is for another time).I'm gonna read the Fedora review in my LXF tonight as to be honest I haven't seen it yet, but I'm not happy about 4 stars, it has its problems but so does every other distro at the moment.Fedora is funded by RedHat, so what? Open Source and commercial enterprise should go hand in hand if Open Source is to succeed in the future. I run a site that sells Linux CDs, some of the money made goes to donations to Open Source projects, the rest goes to me to fund my development of Open Source software (and food so my family can eat).I would like nothing better than to be able to work on Open Source projects for free, but at the same time, I have a wife and 2 kids in a 2 bed council flat so of course I am going to try and make a few quid while releasing code into the public domain, as do many other projects.29 • FC4 -- mixed results for me (by James on 2005-07-12 13:54:03 GMT from United States)
I installed FC4 on a home machine...no problems...runs like a charm. Since I could grab a more recent version of zapping, the only TV viewing program I know of on Linux that does closed captioning right (sorry, tvtime, but not drawing the caption text background doesn't cut it), I decided to install it on a computer to give to our former ASL teacher, who's deaf. I started her using KDE...and found that logging out from KDE wouldn't get back to the gdm login screen! I had to ctrl-alt-bs after confirming the logoff. GNOME, OTOH, logged out fine.

OK...switched her to GNOME. Now gaim is flaking out, and the printer that worked fine when we first set her up isn't talking to the computer. (The computer knows the device is there and what it is, but can't print a test page when I set up the queue...and what's with the GUI printer configuration program not being in the System Tools menu?) I'll be bringing over memtest86 and some LiveCDs to see whether they turn up a problem or run better respectively.30 • all roads lead to ubuntu (by im_ka on 2005-07-12 13:59:32 GMT from Sweden)
...at least for me.

i switched to win2000 a couple of weeks ago cause i couldn't sort out direct mp3 recording.but i rather use audacity to record sound and then convert it to mp3 than using windows. i just can't stand using it.

ubuntu work perfectly and it has a great future imho. no wonder it's so succesful.31 • FC4 and Ubuntu propaganda (by lezard on 2005-07-12 14:00:13 GMT from France)
I've never been a Fedora Core fan, but it used to be my reference distribution regarding stability and seriousness. However, FC4 was the buggiest Fedora I ever tried. It crashed a lot and it couldn't stay more than a week on my machines.

To me, it seems that Ubuntu is getting some anti-propaganda only because its supporters talked too much (like the gentoo ones when Gentoo was hyped). In every thread regarding GNU/Linux there was a guy explaining that everybody else should use Ubuntu, and that it is the solution to everything. This gives a very bad image of the Ubuntu fan base.32 • Fedora Core 4. (by Jordi on 2005-07-12 14:25:44 GMT from Spain)
I have used and installed Fedora since Red Hat 7. And i can say that is far more usable than 3 years ago.Fedora has become very easy to install, Anaconda is probably the best Linux installer out there, even with text mode, is very easy to use.Fedora is not always free from problems, i've had some strange behaviour sometimes, but overall is fairly stable.There few exciting new things in Fedora 4 (maybe except OpenOffice 2.0, which IMHO is a bit too much beta still), but there is just one thing that overcomes all those minor annoyances: it is MUCH faster than Fedora 3, and probably than any other distro out there. That is because is built upon gcc 4.0.33 • Fedora not better than redhat9 (by shukree krunz on 2005-07-12 14:41:11 GMT from United Arab Emirates)
I did not use Fedora 4 much, but my RAID did not work,not many Video formats work, thats at least.In contrast Mandrake 10.1 recognized all my three types of hard drives, RAID and SATA and all Partitions mounted, most of Video Types Playable, and alot of thing to like.34 • PCLinuxOS 9.1 (by Pablo n2meg on 2005-07-12 14:44:39 GMT from United States)
As a Debian user, I'm pleased to say that PCLinuxOs 9.1 works great! This is the best yet. I remastered the LiveCd and made a Live-DVD of my system. It rocks! Wish that I could do the same with my Mepis Machine and Xandros. The mklivecd scripts should be included on most live cd's so a user can just take his system with him on a cd or dvd and use it at work or at a friends house... Keep up the good work guys!Linux Rules...

Pablo n2meg...Bronx New York.35 • Gentoo, FC4, Ubuntu, Sarge, etc. (by Ed Borasky on 2005-07-12 14:48:06 GMT from United States)
Yeah, I gave FC4 15 minutes on my triple-boot test box (one Gentoo, one Debian and one "RPM" distro at any given time). I wasn't particularly impressed. gcc 4 is loaded with bugs, so I ended up going back to CentOS 4.x for the RPM distro.

Ubuntu -- I must admit I've never tried it, only because it's Gnome based and I'm KDE-based. :) I have loaded "sarge" and don't see much reason to go beyond it on my Debian systems. KDE 3.4 will probably get installed there, but other than that, sarge is just fine.

Gentoo is still my distro of choice, primarily because I build a lot of packages from source anyway, and because their Java support is the best I've found in the Linux world -- other than Sun, of course :).

Xen rocks, by the way!36 • disappointed (by warpengi on 2005-07-12 14:50:45 GMT from Canada)
I was really looking forward to this weeks distro watch to read more about the EU's voting against software patents. This is HUGE news for the open-source movement and I thought that there might be an analysis in this edition. Not only is there no announcement there is no mention at all.

I have read some stuff about the decision but I have yet to read a really good analysis of what it means. The news seems to have come and gone with barely a ripple.37 • Fedora (by CJP on 2005-07-12 14:52:30 GMT from Sweden)
I started using Fedora as a server-OS when Core 2 was out and it caused me some headaches. It froze on reboot for example which isn't good when there is no screen or keyboard...Thankfully Core 3 is much better and runs without a hitch as a web-, mysql-, local ftp- and terminal server all at once. I expect the same from FC4 and I'm glad to hear they haven't tried to evolve too much from FC3. Don't fix it if it ain't broken. And don't confuse "niche" with "broken". Mandriva is user-friendly, Gentoo is DIY, DSL is mobile and Fedora does it's thing.38 • FC4 rocks in providing application development environment (by peyman on 2005-07-12 15:03:49 GMT from Canada)
I am enjoying FC4 at home, where I do not have internet access. I had difficulty installing Sun Application Server 8.1, bundled with Netbeans 4.1 on Ubuntu 5.04; but no problems so far in FC4. Fedora Core 4 is responsive and gives me all I am expecting for development environment. It failed to recognize my older computer's video card (Intel S3 Vierge); but Ubuntu had no problems to install appropriate drivers for it.39 • Fedora Core 4 (Stentz) comments (by Antonio on 2005-07-12 15:27:11 GMT from United States)
Fedora Core 4 has mixed reviews and comments. Some are positive some are negative. On the one hand some of the problems/complains can be resolved very easily and despite most negative comments some new distributions are based on Fedora Core take the new distributions. See above if you have not already, you will see this:

New distribution additions

* AsianLinux. AsianLinux is an Indian Linux distribution which aims to promote Linux and open source. Based on Fedora Core, it comes with several enhancements, as well as additional multimedia and development tools; these include Firefox with Flash, Java Runtime, Kaffeine and Real Player plugins, various graphics manipulation applications, and CAD design software.

* Niigata Linux. Niigata Linux is a Fedora-based Japanese Linux distribution designed as a web application environment for web development with Apache and PostgreSQL.

* OpenLX. OpenLX is a Linux distribution made in India. It is based on Fedora Core with updated packages and many user-friendly enhancements, such as complete multimedia capabilities, support for 6 Indian languages, Java SDK and an extra application CD. OpenLX comes in two editions - a single-CD "Desktop" edition and a 5-CD "Enterprise" edition.

Sure it has it bugs like everything else, not all rpms, are ready but they are getting there (Stentz rpms). Core 4 is a more responsive system as compared to Core 3, i.e, faster boot time. Some stuff is not working as it should. They removed some very useful programs from it like AbiWord, Koffice, xmms, grip. They were moved to extras. I understand that these programs were more than needed. Programs in Kde do not compile with Gcc4.0, but using the export flag, I managed to compile kile and install it since no rpm was available and the one that was available failed a dependency. Nonetheless, in general Fedora Core 4 is in my opinion an excellent distribution. One just needs to put the time to get it to our liking. If Core 4 is not all that great, then why do others base their distribution off of it. The new distributions and some like BLAG, FOX are based off Fedora and many argue that they are better than their predecessor. Fedora is slowing its release cycle, maybe that will help slow down some of the problems which people are complaining about. I like Fedora Core and I guess that sometimes it is a pain to work some things out, but in the end it simply works to my liking. I hope that Fedora does not go to the Ubuntu path -> one cd with a one-size fits all. Even though people complain that it is bloated, it has mostly everything that we need and some stuff that we don't.40 • FC4/Ubuntu/Etc. (by Mark W. Tomlinson on 2005-07-12 15:35:34 GMT from United States)
I downloaded and burned the DVD image for FC4 (after verifying the SHA1SUM checksum) and got nothing but kernel panics when I started the install (this was on my desktop that I did the D/L and burn with). I then tried it on my laptop and it seemed to go okay - but when I rebooted after the install completed, it just locked up. I ran the mediacheck on the DVD, which said all was well. Tried again, same results.

I then D/L'd the CD images, verified the checksums and burned them. Same kernel panics on the desktop, same install pattern on the the laptop. I'll try the "hard" power-down suggested in a previous comment, but I'm not very hopeful...

Ubuntu has been my day-to-day distro since prerelease 4.10 (Warty Warthog) days - I'm currently running 5.04. For c. 85% of what I do, Ubuntu has given me what I want - a quick, responsive and clean environment, easy updates, LOTS of additional software (if I want it) and very good stability.

What it HASN'T given me is good experience with multimedia (i.e. "non-free") stuff. I'm not talking esoterics here, I mean things like Flash, MPlayer, RealPlayer, Java - all of it Web content-related. I've never been able to get consistent performance when, for example, trying to view video feeds from various news sites. Flash movies will play (with no audio), Mplayer/RealPlayer gives me a black video frame, Java stuff works - sometimes. I've tried just about everything short of compiling the source code (where available), which I am loathe to do. Still, it's the distro that best "suits" me - I just hope that the multimedia stuff gets sorted out soon (by smarter folks than me).

As to the "anti-*" sentiments, I've noticed that a lot of people involved with free & open software can be, ah, somewhat overzealous. I've found that fanatics can be very off-putting to those that don't share their beliefs, in any realm of human endeavor.

BTW - my Monday was just not the same...41 • Ubuntu on the shoulders of Debian (by Krzysztof Krawczyk on 2005-07-12 15:56:23 GMT from Poland)
Hello,you shouldn't forget that Ubuntu was originally based on Debian. It filled the gap when Debian's release was quite a bit delayed. It took the best from Debian and released own distribution. Many current Ubuntu developers are previous Debian developers. Many current Ubuntu users are previous Ubuntu users. They just wanted (not mistake) more freedom than Debian could give them.So, I'm not surprised that Ubuntu took Debian's place in hall of fame.If we won't see any Debian release in next year, I think it would be doomed.

S.M.A.R.T will not be the default pakage manager, but it will be there along urpmi.

Lycoris stuff will go in the "discovery" version.43 • About FC 4 (and FC in general) (by Agustin Barto at 2005-07-12 16:09:04 GMT from Argentina)
I've been a user of Fedora Core since the first release (and a Red Hat Linux user since 6.0) and I get kinda angry when I read reviews like the one in Linux Format. Almost everyone seems to forget the basic principle behind FC: EXPECT PROBLEMS. Every release of FC had some cutting edge feature that caused a lot of problems (exec-shield, SELinux, gcc4, etc.), but after a couple of months most of the problems are solved by updated packages or by work-arounds. The moral of the story is that if you want to get a reasonably easy access to the new Linux technologies you have to expect minor problems, show-stoppers and even complete catastrophes.

There's absolutely no point in comparing FC with Mandrake and/or SuSE (or even Debian). These distros have completely different intended "audiences" and uses. You wouldn't hire a mechanic to run a hospital or put a driving-school student behind the wheel of a 500HP Ferrari.

The only thing I really hate about Fedora Core is the lack of documentation. Although it's possible to get some information out of the RHEL manuals sometimes they're not up to date with the latest FC stuff.44 • Fedora Install (by Mike on 2005-07-12 16:21:01 GMT from United States)
IIRC: you may have to disable DMA for your install. Similar problems were reported during the beta. See:

for one instance. In this case, the tester could not get the mediacheck to verify the media until he made the change suggested.

Don't give up.45 • Re: • disappointed (by warpengi (by DaveW on 2005-07-12 16:36:43 GMT from United States)
Warpngi beat me to it. DW is the most internationally oriented Linux site I know of, so it would be the natural place for informed comment on the the EU vote means. There's a lot of comment out there now, but near as I can tell, most of it is baseless speculation. I know DW can do it better. Maybe next issue?46 • FC3 was Perfect but FC4 - faild on my hardware (by Fotograf on 2005-07-12 16:36:46 GMT from Canada)
FC3 was perfectly running + all multimedia installed afterwardsbut faild to install FC4 -DVD and 4 CD downloaded 3 times !Every time the installation freezing at kudzu video.....the first 3 seconds.....so I give 9/10 to FC3 and 0/10 on FC4 will be waiting for FC5 now and using Deb Sarge in the meantime47 • my 2 cents regarding Ubuntu (by G.U. on 2005-07-12 16:49:50 GMT from Germany)
Well, somehow I get the impression that Ubuntu users are not overly critical because they fell for a hype. I switched from FC3 to Ubuntu 5.04. Certainly it is an appealing distro that looks clean and tidy. But soon I had to realize that I had to manually install dozens of missing packages, for instance the complete KDE.Also, there were some really - really! - annoying bugs: on my machine U-DMA wasn't enabled, and if I use the hdparm command to fix it this does not get remembered by the system. Surely there is a way around but how much time would that take? What I absolutely don't get is that the update manager sometimes asks for a file from the intall CD. I mean, this thing came on ONE disk and is not even completely installed on HD? As far as I remembered I did a complete install. This really gave me headaches. Even worse, there is no option to download a &%#! 70 kb file off the net instead of getting it from CD..After I have finished a yet to be started term paper for university I will go back to Fedora. Ubuntu is quite good but definitely not the best thing since bread got sliced. However, I wholeheartedly recommend this distro to newbies.48 • FC3 was Perfect but FC4 - faild on my hardware (by Fotograf on 2005-07-12 16:51:23 GMT from Canada)
FC3 was perfectly running + all multimedia installed afterwardsbut faild to install FC4 -DVD and 4 CD downloaded 3 times !Every time the installation freezing at kudzu video.....the first 3 seconds.....so I give 9/10 to FC3 and 0/10 on FC4 will be waiting for FC5 now and using Deb Sarge in the meantime49 • P.S. (by G.U. on 2005-07-12 16:51:57 GMT from Germany)
btw, FC 2 was my first linux distro - then I switched to FC3. Both did a great job. I expect FC4 to be no exception.50 • RE: Ubuntu on the shoulders of Debian (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-07-12 16:57:44 GMT from Italy)
"They just wanted (not mistake) more freedom than Debian could give them."

Not in my books. Nothing can replace the freedom of Debian. But of course if you are a newbie and you don't know how to deal with the bugs of Debian Sid (and sometimes testing as well), you might like Ubuntu's handholding (too much of it, IMO).51 • FC3 was Perfect but FC4 - faild on my hardware (by Fotograf on 2005-07-12 17:00:30 GMT from Canada)
FC3 was perfectly running + all multimedia installed afterwardsbut faild to install FC4 -DVD and 4 CD downloaded 3 times !Every time the installation freezing at kudzu video.....the first 3 seconds.....so I give 9/10 to FC3 and 0/10 on FC4 will be waiting for FC5 now and using Deb Sarge in the meantime52 • StartCom 4.0.4 MultiMedia Edition (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-07-12 17:06:04 GMT from Italy)
Sounds interesting. I'd like to give it a spin. But I don't want to go through the fuss of burning and using 4 CDs.The mirrors have the md5sum for a DVD iso, but not the iso itself.53 • FC3 was Perfect but FC4 - faild on my hardware (by Fotograf on 2005-07-12 17:07:09 GMT from Canada)
FC3 was perfectly running + all multimedia installed afterwardsbut faild to install FC4 -DVD and 4 CD downloaded 3 times !Every time the installation freezing at kudzu video.....the first 3 seconds.....so I give 9/10 to FC3 and 0/10 on FC4 will be waiting for FC5 now and using Deb Sarge in the meantime54 • P.S. (by G.U. on 2005-07-12 17:10:00 GMT from Germany)
btw, FC 2 was my first linux distro - then I switched to FC3. Both did a great job. I expect FC4 to be no exception.55 • Joey Hess, Debian's press officer (by shruggy on 2005-07-12 17:11:05 GMT from Germany)
IIRC, Debian's press officer is Martin 'Joey' Schulze.56 • Re: Ubuntu on the shoulders of Debian (by Andrew Saunders on 2005-07-12 17:13:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Many current Ubuntu developers are previous Debian developers."

You make it sound as though the majority of the Ubuntu developers have decided to abandon Debian for Ubuntu. This is not the case. Most of the higher-ranking members of the Ubuntu community are *still* active Debian developers. (And those that aren't probably never were in the first place). In no particular order, here is a list of the Debian developers whose names I saw mentioned during my brief trawl of Ubuntu's website, together with their roles within the Ubuntu community:

Of course, if you can provide a similar (longer!) list of people who've "jumped ship" to prove your case, please feel free to do so.57 • AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.1 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-07-12 17:17:41 GMT from Italy)
Were you looking for a Debian installer better than the official one? Now you found it: AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.1: kernel 2.6.12, Xorg, it configures X for you...(but not NVIDIA or ATI)Only, I found that their Xorg has some bugs.58 • Re: Mandriva (by Leo on 2005-07-12 17:20:45 GMT from United States)
Thanks a lot for the info Vincent ! THey just updated the release chedule I see

Ladislav: you may wanna update the Schedule estimate for thenext Mandriva: 2005.09.15

I wonder why they'll only use Lycoris stuff in Discovery. Mandriva is very, very useable, but it can be made way more user friendly, there was a nice analysis a few days ago here in DW by an ex-Lycoris guys.

Anyways, I am really looking forward for the next release.

Cheers,Leo59 • fedora4 (by Bibhu Prasad Swain on 2005-07-12 17:32:01 GMT from India)
Wonder how folks at Fedora managed to compile KDE 3.4 withGCC-4.0.Anyway I compiled GCC-4.0.1 to have latest KDE code and apps.I don't really like graphical utilities to manage system anyway,there are plenty of them, give us a break Linux is supposed to addfun and excitement to computing not supposed to spoil us Microsoftstyle.Fedora4 is pretty good am I think it's more stable than Fedora3but not like Debian.60 • Love (by Robert Pogson on 2005-07-12 17:37:24 GMT from Canada)
Distrowatch is my favourite place. I come here every day to learn more about GNU/Linux distros. A distro is made from one or more versions of the Linux kernel and a selection from tens ot thousands of packages of software, including the GNU utilities. If you remember the maths for combinations there are astronomical numbers of combinations of these things that could be distros. The few hundred that we see on Distrowatch are the superstars with that extra something that makes them popular. The love we feel for particular distros is akin to the love we have for people, so complex and different even though their DNA is very similar.

We should not be putting down any distro. We should celebrate our strengths and diversities just as we do for human beings. We should come together and support each other and our distros with love and energy to make the world a better place. Leave the negativity to that other OS. When you can count the few problems we have with Linux distros and compare that with systems running that other OS that have to be scanned for thousands of malwares or locked up so tightly they are scarcely usable, we should have tears of joy for our liberation.

I have been using computers for 36 years and life is good. When you put one of our dear distros on some fantastic hardware there seems no limit to what we can do. Recently, I put a 64 bit server with gigabytes of RAM and hundreds of gigabytes of RAID storage in my classroom with Debian 3.1. My students boot old PCs over the LAN with LTSP (etherboot+X) or Thinstation and we share the love of great apps like Firefox, MySQL, Gimp, OpenOffice, many gigabytes of data from the web, served locally and indexed with SWISH-e, and great web apps like phpBB, Coppermine Photo Gallery, Wikipedia, Moodle, backed up by great utilities like BIND, apache, squid, and DansGuardian to make local and distant browsing a breeze. Share the love!61 • Fedora Core 4 (by Philip on 2005-07-12 17:44:18 GMT from United States)
I have been trying each release of Fedora Core since Core 2 and for 4 I was really hoping better hardware configuration i.e. my wireless card. Still doesn't work and I am too much of a newbie to make it work so I had to scrap Core 4 once again. I do find Core 4 not as "exciting" as other distros but I believe a 4 star rating is very harsh for a decent distro.62 • FC4 seems flawed... (by Lance Lucas on 2005-07-12 17:47:04 GMT from United States)
I upgraded by laptop from FC3 to FC4, and was unable to compile and use vanilla kernel sources (2.6.11 or 2.6.12). The morph-sources, ck-sources and vanilla all work great for me under FC3. I always received some type of error while loading my ALSA module (intel8x0 in this case). I don't think GCC4 compiles unpatched kernel code correctly, at least not the GCC included with FC4..63 • Ubuntu (by Jeff on 2005-07-12 17:47:38 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu is NOT Debian! There may be developers that work on both and Ubuntu may be based on Debian, but that does not make it Debian. It is incompatible with the Debian repositories. And if you want KDE, your only option is to go with a buggy Kubuntu. Someone mentioned Debian Pure above and this project has the right idea. It just takes what is great about Debian and expands on it. It has become my install of choice simply because it installs a pure Debian system, hence the name.64 • Various (by William Roddy on 2005-07-12 17:57:01 GMT from United States)
I like ALL Linux distributions!!!

Current Ubuntu idiosyncrasies:To make RealPlayer work, remove the Xine plugin from the Mozilla plugin file.

To give sound to RealPlayer, uncheck both the sound start buttons in the sound configuration tool.

KANOTIX:All multimedia works without installing additions after a KANOTIX install. That distro has the shortest set-up time, for me.

Questions:Can someone tell me how to get windows media player things to work on the net by just clicking on them (other than installing windows)?

Does anyone have a good explanation why FC4, Suse, Mandrake, and many others have multiple CDs and MEPIS, KNOPPIX, KANOTIX, and MANY others have just one?

I wish everyone who writes in would include a tip they've learned that help someone else with their Linux problems. That would be cool! Sort of a price-of-admission.

Thanks for those who've included tips today. And thanks, Ladislav. You are a brilliant editor.65 • Love (by Robert Pogson on 2005-07-12 18:03:36 GMT from Canada)
Distrowatch is my favourite place. I come here every day to learn more about GNU/Linux distros. A distro is made from one or more versions of the Linux kernel and a selection from tens ot thousands of packages of software, including the GNU utilities. If you remember the maths for combinations there are astronomical numbers of combinations of these things that could be distros. The few hundred that we see on Distrowatch are the superstars with that extra something that makes them popular. The love we feel for particular distros is akin to the love we have for people, so complex and different even though their DNA is very similar.

We should not be putting down any distro. We should celebrate our strengths and diversities just as we do for human beings. We should come together and support each other and our distros with love and energy to make the world a better place. Leave the negativity to that other OS. When you can count the few problems we have with Linux distros and compare that with systems running that other OS that have to be scanned for thousands of malwares or locked up so tightly they are scarcely usable, we should have tears of joy for our liberation.

I have been using computers for 36 years and life is good. When you put one of our dear distros on some fantastic hardware there seems no limit to what we can do. Recently, I put a 64 bit server with gigabytes of RAM and hundreds of gigabytes of RAID storage in my classroom with Debian 3.1. My students boot old PCs over the LAN with LTSP (etherboot+X) or Thinstation and we share the love of great apps like Firefox, MySQL, Gimp, OpenOffice, many gigabytes of data from the web, served locally and indexed with SWISH-e, and great web apps like phpBB, Coppermine Photo Gallery, Wikipedia, Moodle, backed up by great utilities like BIND, apache, squid, and DansGuardian to make local and distant browsing a breeze. Share the love!66 • What is the distro ? (by Jarex on 2005-07-12 18:09:23 GMT from United States)
You don't know what you want these days Fedora fc3 was pretty much bland fc4 might be the samei can't make up my mind slackware or mepis?should i get all the good apps via appget or have a slackware machinei dono lets take a look at the features and maby the screen shots ?Mandriva 2005 le is the best distro i have sceen ,67 • Double posting (by rob from Mt. Healthy, Oh on 2005-07-12 18:16:01 GMT from United States)
There were several duplicate posts in this issue ('Fotograf')

I believe this is caused when you post a message, then 'refresh' the page later to view any new comments. Your browser probably asked something like "The page you are trying to view contains POSTDATA ... To resend the data, click OK... '"

If you click 'OK", you generate a repost of your original posting.

Hey WR, does this count as a tip ?68 • sorry for doubling.... (by Fotograf on 2005-07-12 18:23:37 GMT from Canada)
I am running WindXp at the moment and using Opera-8 as browser - it did not give me any feedback------about reposting---sorry for the inconvinience (and my error on Kudzu - should be the Anaconda - instead)69 • What went wrong with Fedora Core 4 (by Rob Taylor on 2005-07-12 18:52:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
I read the review in Linux Format and personally found it to be quite harsh.I'm definately a newbie to Linux, but I like to tinker. Unfortunately, I've somehow managed to screw up my Suse systems twice by updating the kernel etc. (prob. due to foolishness on my part), and had to start over. Fedora Core feels solid and I've used it for longer than any other distro and updated regularly without problem. So much so that I had the confidence to upgrade to FC4 via yum and done so almost painlessly.

It would be nice to see more graphical tools, but not all newbies need things that easy, so long as there is good support. Simple step by step guides on how to get your system up and ready (like Nvidia support and setting up Apt) are essential, which thankfully there's plenty of documentation out there. More so, than I found for Suse, Mandrake or even Debian.

I agree FC4 isn't a particularly exciting release, but what was Mandrake LE 2005 all about?70 • FC, The red-headed-step-child (by michael on 2005-07-12 18:55:03 GMT from United States)
First, I'm glad there is such robust and viable competition in the Linux distro world.

Second, there are Fedora/Red Hat lovers I have already upset, but you need to hear me out.

Third, Red Hat has little incentive in making Fedora anything special. It can NOT compete with their commercial offering!

Fourth, They are a for-profit company getting free help in getting their commercial distro together.

Fifth, I applaud all of those people who happily contribute to whatever distro they want and hope more do it.

Sixth, Please tell me what the motivation is to contribute to a company who must destroy all viable linux or other competitors in order to maintain their market domination?71 • Good post (by William Roddy on 2005-07-12 19:17:35 GMT from United States)
Robert Pogson:Good post. Linux: share the love. Sometimes we all need an attitude readjustment.

rob, from Mt. Healthy, Oh:Answer to your question: yep!

Thanks.72 • RE: Various (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-07-12 20:08:24 GMT from Italy)
"Questions:Can someone tell me how to get windows media player things to work on the net by just clicking on them (other than installing windows)?"

My solution is to install kaffeine + kaffeine-mozilla + w32codecs. It works like a charm. Totem works pretty well too. Of course you need to add to your sources.list:

Amazing! It took months, never ending criticism, a total failure, but eventually he understood that "compulsory donations" don't work.I can see that the forums have been cleared again, except for your one word post and his announcements.76 • @Fedora Core 4 (Stentz) comments (by Anonymous on 2005-07-12 20:50:45 GMT from United States)
In case you or someone you know Fedora Core 4 does not work/install you are referred to

In any case you cannot get your system up, try one that works. Go another route. That is what makes GNU/Linux great. You have absolute control over the system and which system you use. No one should dictate use this, use that. That is the freedom that we are to enjoy as Linux users. Cheers to all!77 • Fedora Core 4 (by Michel Gagné on 2005-07-12 20:51:25 GMT from Canada)
I upgraded from Core 3 to 4 - not a full installation - and everything was fine till I tried up2date. It was showing some upgrades but has never been able to connect to any of the mirror site - always got message "404 - server not found".As it took almost 2 hours to do the upgrade, I decided not to go through the full installation. I installed Ubuntu 5.04 and am very happy.78 • Re: Onebase (by Ariszló on 2005-07-12 21:03:28 GMT from Hungary)
My one word post is not an exception: it was posted after the forums had been cleared.79 • FC4 and Tablet PC (by zukakog on 2005-07-12 21:10:08 GMT from United States)
I usually tri (at least) boot WinXP, Ubuntu, and Fedora on my Gateway m275 Tablet PC. I was very dissapointed, when I upgraded from FC3, to find out that FC4 just doesn't run on my computer. I've done multiple clean installs after the upgrade failed.

I've got FC4 running on my Athalon 64 machine, and I like it. It's actually the only distro that works well on my main box.

I just hope that someone figures out why in heck Fedora 4 won't load X on my laptop!80 • Vanilla Ice (by AQ on 2005-07-12 21:13:44 GMT from United States)
"First, I'm glad there is such robust and viable competition in the Linux distro world."

The GNU GPL has that wonderful effect on things... pure unhindered competition.

"Second, there are Fedora/Red Hat lovers I have already upset, but you need to hear me out."

Because you believe you are a sage, an apostle?

"Third, Red Hat has little incentive in making Fedora anything special. It can NOT compete with their commercial offering!"

Red Hat , makes its money from support contracts... not shrinkwrapped boxes.

"Fourth, They are a for-profit company getting free help in getting their commercial distro together."

Again, anyone can use gpl'd software. The programs they produce under the gpl are as much mine as they are theirs. ALL GPL'D SOFTWARE CAN AND DOES HELP BOTH FOR PROFIT AND NON-PROFIT ENTITIES. At the end of the day, their software is GPL'D, and can help a commercial or non-commercail company all the same. The problem with your statement is that for us to stop supporting commercial companies, we'd have to get rid of the GPL. I like the GPL and competitive capitalism just fine.

"Fifth, I applaud all of those people who happily contribute to whatever distro they want and hope more do it."

Thanks for the applause... why do you think we care for your applause?

"Sixth, Please tell me what the motivation is to contribute to a company who must destroy all viable linux or other competitors in order to maintain their market domination?"

What evidence do you have that Red Hat is destroying all viable Linux competitors or even wants to.

Maybe spend a little time researching how many distributions are based on Fedora. It's a pretty long list, the second longest next to Debian. I don't see Red Hat crushing those people, or the people who have taken their RHEL and turned it into different distros such as CENTOS and Lineox.

Again.. the premise is foolish as all GPL'd software can benefit a corporate entity... so are you proposing that we should stop supporting GPL'd software? Let me remind you that the Linux Kernel is under the GPL as well.

So I've heard you out... got anything better?81 • Major changes must be done (by Tuxtops on 2005-07-12 21:18:42 GMT from United States)
I found FC4 buggy and bloated (as always), and I wrote about it here:http://tuxtops.com/?q=node/23182 • Fedora Core 4 Java Stack (by Yi Ding on 2005-07-12 21:55:29 GMT from United States)
I think this was probably the most important feature of the Fedora Core 4 that a lot of reviewers missed. A fully functional free software Java stack is Redhat's response to Novell's Mono, and I think we'll see a KDE vs. Gnome sized conflict out of this (particularly because Redhat is unwilling to use Mono in any of their products).83 • • RE: Various (by warpengi on 2005-07-12 22:51:31 GMT from Canada)
"Questions:Can someone tell me how to get windows media player things to work on the net by just clicking on them (other than installing windows)?"

I like the mplayer plugin for mozilla. Not everything works but most of it does.84 • Fc4 ...again (by Titiv on 2005-07-12 22:57:43 GMT from France)
What's the prob with fc4?Nothing if you have the"RH" flairEasy to install mainly if you have a HD with reiserfsEasy to compile if you change every day of C++Easy to get repositories if you like to find your way through the YUM, Rpms,Aptget etc..Easy to manage if you get the proper tools working.Nice looking, they have this nice icon set so cheap that it suit as well in gnome than kde and that since hummm ... a long timeThe best distro If you forget for a time, java, multimedia, ntfs and so on; but I must be a bit disturbed there is some patch for these superflous issues.(and for this...help yourself please)

It'stupid I forgot the best : theire distro is so serious that the same day of fc4r was release they announced the 5 (in case someone could complain)

I know I am not fair, but not much than some shouting that fedora is the future of Linux! Ubuntu and others distros should not exist as they are if fedora was so , so what please?85 • i can't find the review on fedora (by vampire_janus@yahoo.com on 2005-07-13 01:59:33 GMT from Philippines)
can someone provide me with the link?86 • Folks remember the Linux newbies (by azbaer on 2005-07-13 02:30:22 GMT from United States)
Folks, I said this before Distrowatch is also read by newbies looking to get aquinted with the many flavors of Linux. Save the distro war flames for another message board.Linux is the kernel. the distros are packages added to the linux kernel.Fedora gets knocked around because its roots with Red Hat, Debian is praised for how it fixed its security problem, (mind you, they took over a year to perfect Sarge) next article about Ubuntu said it all "Naturally, there is no such thing as "perfect distribution" and Ubuntu Linux is not a panacea either, but it has certainly found the right vibe among many computer users"Here is alist of the flavors I have used:RED HAT FedoraSUSEDebianKnoppixSlackwareMandrakeWhiteboxGentooUbuntuYou know Each had the good points and bad, to each his or her own.which one do I perfer....SUSE 9.3 on my desktop, mainly becasue of my time restraints, Debian Sarge on my IBM Thinkpad 600e laptop. Why it is an real oldie.

2nd... Had a bad swap entry into fstab after intall!! (Never saw this bug on any distro before!)

3rd.. Multimedia is tougher to implement (from my point of view)... Ubuntu have an ONE STOP WEB SITE that help you with this... Fedora's help is scatered over the web... :(

BUT i'm always running it for now...88 • FC4 Woes (by Greg on 2005-07-13 04:41:27 GMT from Australia)
iv'e installed FC4 on my old system an works well, only thing it wont install on my 64Bit system which i Miss Greatly so im with Suse for the time bein, in a way FC does lack a bit of GUI tools which it is slowly Getting, over-all i give it thumbs up, just needs more thorough testing i think like release Candidates before a final release89 • Fedora (by Chris Hickman on 2005-07-13 04:48:15 GMT from United States)
I've never understood the appeal of this distro, or really any Red Hat version after 8. Mind you, I am a KDE person, but I'd much rather use Gnome with Red Hat's theme on a different distro, such as PCLinuxOS or Gentoo or something. Red Hat's own up2date STILL doesn't work properly from what I understand (a problem dating back to FC1) - I'm talking you can't select multiple updates at the same time! Plus, last I checked, there's no GUI for yum. Once I got yum working I felt it was pretty good, but not any better than URPMI or apt4rpm.90 • FC4 (by mick on 2005-07-13 05:02:49 GMT from Canada)
When I got tired of stumbling through broken Windows and discovered Linux, it was Red Hat (Shrike) that I was lucky enough to latch on to. When RH announced the move to Enterprise, there was enough forethought to branch off a 'free as in speech' variant, Fedora. Now, after using Fedora Core, FC2, FC3 and FC4, I have to admit that I have a little bit of loyalty to the 'little blue hat'...No, everything did not 'work right out of the box' but, hey, what's the point of running an OS if you can't open the hood on and start tinkering with it? BTW, everything works great now, thanks to the input of a great community.91 • Re: Folks remember the Linux newbies (by Ariszló on 2005-07-13 06:26:23 GMT from Hungary)
azbaer wrote: Linux is the kernel. the distros are packages added to the linux kernel.

That's GnuSpeak. Linux is an operating system using the Linux kernel and the kernel is the kernel.

FYI. I respect, accept and love GNU's philosophy but hate using awkward terms like GNU-slash-Linux.92 • Fedora 4 (by Peter on 2005-07-13 08:40:24 GMT from Australia)
Although I have had problems with gpilot and it is still to be resloved (datebook in evolution does not update after the initial sync) I am very happy with this version of Fedora, it seems a much more mature distribution than the previous 3.I really like the boot times now, so much faster than any other os I have ever used.I do all my updating with yumex and have had no particular problems with it.For the first time ever, I actually got sound when I clicked on the test button, instead of having to mess around hopefully clicking everything in sight that had anything to do with sound set up and never really knowing how I actually got it to work in the end.I do not do any printing with Fedora as my printer is not compatable so I cant commant on printing.My USB hard drive just mounts itself when I plug it in and I can happily rsync with it for my backups using a script.I only use dial up but have no particular problems in setting up my connection and modem.The beta version of OpenOffice 2 is remarkably stable and I can use it with confidence.I still use a "proper" version of Java, the latest jdk version and it all works quite ok, right through from compiling to the browser plug in, web start etc.However, all this stuff, (browser plug ins I mean) Java, Flash etc should all be just a standard fixture these days, with perhaps an option on installing if you want to use it or not. It always takes so much time getting everything working again after a new install.I dual boot with Windows XP home with no problems and can share my files with XP by simply using the USB hard drive.So, I was quite surprised to see so much criticism regarding Fedora Core 4, I feel it is a very good distribution and am happy to use it as my main computer system.93 • debian secuirty (by HB on 2005-07-13 11:59:54 GMT from Germany)
IMO there were two big problems with debian security. Not only the broken security updates were a problem, but the fact that the Debian project or the security team didn't deem it necessary to inform the user about the problems created a (perhaps bigger) problem itself. Security problems that big should be announced, at least on security-announce, perhaps even the homepage. Instead the users had to search umpteen forum postings and blog entries for information. Definitly lowers Debian's usability, especially as a server distribution. Remarkable is also that big parts of the discussion on debian-security were under the heading "bad press", not "our users don't get security updates" or "our users don't get security updates and nobody told them". Worrying "bad press" sounds remarkably like something one expects from MS.

Greetings HB94 • Fedora Core 4 (by CyberBoy on 2005-07-13 15:31:59 GMT from Bulgaria)
I think the distro is pretty good. A lot of GUI tools for everyting i need, and some tools i never see in other distro - the GUI Apache Config, NFS Config and Samba ... To say that there aren't GUI Tools and Utils in Fedora is very wrong and foolish.NTFS ? Just download rpm about 70-80kb and you are OK ! Xine is on a one "yum" away ...My final words - perfect distribution ! No problems !95 • RE: Vanilla Ice Comments (by michael on 2005-07-13 15:36:26 GMT from United States)
>Red Hat , makes its money from support contracts... not >shrinkwrapped boxes.I can't download RH's commercial product right now. I need to buy a support license first. It's the long way around to selling shrink-wrapped boxes. (No, CentOS isn't the answer)

>The problem with your statement is that for us to stop supporting >commercial companies, we'd have to get rid of the GPL. Not at all. What Red Hat is doing is "embrace, extend and extinguish" tactics. They have created a commercial software company while still using the GPL. What Debian is doing promotes competition and creates an enterprise-class distro.

>I like the GPL and competitive capitalism just fine.I like the GPL too, but RH has no direct competitors. So, where's the competition? IBM is services, HP is hardware and some support. Microsoft, yes but their different. Suse, maybe one day if Novell can execute anything right.

>Spend a little time researching how many distributions are based on Fedora.None of which compete with RH. RH easily distinguishes themselves from these distros by calling them "hobby projects." This reads as not-ready-to-run-your-business-processes.

You seem to be under the faulty assumption that there is a rich and competitive Linux market. A market is where people exchange money for goods and services. A market is not the variety of free and community supported distros.

Please, stop pretending that RH would gladly allow another company to take their profits and drive down their prices.96 • Ice T (by AQ on 2005-07-13 16:43:23 GMT from United States)
"I can't download RH's commercial product right now. I need to buy a support license first. It's the long way around to selling shrink-wrapped boxes. (No, CentOS isn't the answer)"

That is how the GPL was written. You do not have to make your product downloadable under the GPL, you just have to give the source code of the software you give or sell to a person either at the time they receive the binary, or any time up to 3 years in which they ask for it. It is only the receiver of the binary that can request the code... not just anyone that wants it.

That is simply how the GPL works. It was written to allow commercial activity as long as the consumer who buys the product can receive the source.

CentOS isn't the answer because? It is the same thing, last I checked.

"Not at all. What Red Hat is doing is "embrace, extend and extinguish" tactics. They have created a commercial software company while still using the GPL. What Debian is doing promotes competition and creates an enterprise-class distro."

You need to read the GPL apparently. The GPL allows commercial activity with items licensed by it. Ever heard of Mepis? It's a commercial product which is based on Debian.

"I like the GPL too, but RH has no direct competitors."

What in the world qualifies a direct competitor in your mind? Debian and hundreds of other distributions aren't direct competitors. Your logic is too flawed there... as the fact is that nothing can stop that competition from springing up at any time.

"None of which compete with RH. RH easily distinguishes themselves from these distros by calling them "hobby projects." This reads as not-ready-to-run-your-business-processes."

I run my business on Fedora... still no logic here as far as I can tell. None of these other linux distributions compete with Red Hat? Therefore Red Hat is doing something to squelch that competition? Therefore in a competitive marketplace a commercial company has no right to exist even when it competes fairly while obeying the gpl? Sorry... that's crackpot speak.

"You seem to be under the faulty assumption that there is a rich and competitive Linux market. A market is where people exchange money for goods and services. A market is not the variety of free and community supported distros."

There is a fairly wide Linux market that you are apparently unaware of. Xandros, Mepis, Mandriva, aLinux, Suse, Progeny... the list really goes on and on. People pay for support and modifications to source code. Because you can't see it with your all knowing eye doesn't mean it isn't happening. There is quite a bit of money flowing around the Linux world. Debian receives thousands of dollars in donations as well from companies that use its distro on their servers.

Really, there is nothing I am hearing from you but a baseless argument. It is an argument for someone who doesn't seem to understand whether the GPL or the marketplace for Linux itself.

If you hate competitive capitalism, which is employed by the GPL and is vibrant and growing, then what would you prefer? Microsoft through its use of patents enjoys dictatorship capitalism at this moment. Competitive capitalism will prove to be stronger, more able to distribute wealth, and more merit based than any current system.

If you'd prefer communism, then that is truly your own problem.

"Please, stop pretending that RH would gladly allow another company to take their profits and drive down their prices."

Please prove that they have done anything to stop other companies or distros from competing. I can blow a lot of misguided smoke too... but at least show us some facts and articles for your baseless assumptions... and give the GPL a few reads.97 • Fedora Core 4 (by Dwayne Walker on 2005-07-13 16:46:15 GMT from United States)
I have tried Fedora Core 3 and 4. I'm big on multimedia. Cinepaint, Cinelerra etc. I seem to have more success with Fedora than some other distributions. What is really paramount to me is wifi. I have yet to get my DWL-G650 (DLink) card to work in my laptop. Very little had to be done with SuSE, Mepis and some others.

Right now our "family" machine runs SuSE 9.2. The most heard complaint (which would apply to any distro) is from the younger members who want a multimedia experience at least as stable as XP. I know theatrical trailers aren't the driving force for Linux. But we need to keep the kids and young adults interest. I've heard mine argue with friends in favor of Linux.As for Fedora, I'm not giving up on it by any means. And yes I'm familiar with madwifi and Mplayer. Been working with both.98 • Edited Ice T (by AQ on 2005-07-13 16:49:14 GMT from United States)
"Really, there is nothing I am hearing from you but a baseless argument. It is an argument from someone who doesn't seem to understand the GPL or the marketplace for Linux itself."99 • FC4, is it worth the jump from FC3? (by Christian Valin at 2005-07-13 16:54:23 GMT from United States)
I am running FC4 on my home CPU and have been running Fedora since core 1 was generally available. My motivation was to check out the speed improvements. I must say that it is noticeably faster on my P4 3Ghz HP machine w/1.5Gb ram and 250Gb HD (its a model a470m, if you wanted to know).

Frankly, I'm disappointed only by one stability issue with KDE (an intermittent problem on logout). I've done some troubleshooting (I'm no expert here...) and think I've eliminated the most recent xorg update as a cause as well as any "stock" kernel.

Other than that, FC4 is a speed improvement. For new linux users, I have to agree with other folks and say it isn't even though installation chores go smoothly enough (the lvm gui tool seesm nice but it's not as easy as it ought to be and insinuates complete lvm management which isn't the case for me... I did another install and kept without lvm2 for now). Major brand OSs (HPUX, Solaris, and even AIX) seem to do lvm management much better. Then again, this is only among the first cuts of lvm manament I've seen on Fedora so I can't wait to see it get better as I'm sure it will.

I've steered completely away from xen; just don't need it for my home computer.100 • Re: Folks remember the Linux newbies (by K on 2005-07-13 19:59:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
[quote]azbaer wrote: Linux is the kernel. the distros are packages added to the linux kernel.

That's GnuSpeak. Linux is an operating system using the Linux kernel and the kernel is the kernel.

FYI. I respect, accept and love GNU's philosophy but hate using awkward terms like GNU-slash-Linux.[/quote]

BTW, 100th comment!101 • FC4 LXF Review (by LinuxISO on 2005-07-13 20:01:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
For all of those who felt offended by the FC4 review in LXF I have complained in LXF's forum and the author is going to give me some kind of response. I suggest anyone who wants to pops down to http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/ and complain, their forums don't need signup by the look of it.102 • I have had nothing but bad luck and frustration... (by Colnel_Panic on 2005-07-14 00:33:49 GMT from Canada)
dRed sHat and Fedorka. Almost every Debian, BSD, and Slack based distro likes my machine and I am able to at least make it to the desktop. RPM sucks, even Suse 9.3 sucks and I really hate to say that because I thought 9.1 personal was the cat's bum. Novell is half way to being another Micro$hieza. I refuse to be a tester for Red Hat, they make money and pay people to work there, let them be testers. I would rather give my time, energy and money to a decent fledgling distro. Just my $0.02. >;-]103 • Spelled my name wrong... (by Colonel_Panic on 2005-07-14 00:38:36 GMT from Canada)
Sorry about the typo. Should read Colonel_Panic.104 • Debian (by Matt [TLMP] on 2005-07-14 08:04:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Not sure why they were so annoyed about the distrowatch article on debian. After all, your just relaying information.

And to not say thank you for a donation..... well.... thats shocking :/

Matt.105 • Slackware and all the others (by DavidR on 2005-07-14 08:42:51 GMT from Germany)
I've been a slackware fan for many years now but recently, since Patrick's illness, I have been looking around for alternatives. Slackware is still my "old faithful". I know what I have and I know how to fix it if I need something new. What worries me more and more is the lack of news from Slackware. My guess is that the support for new features in other distros will convince me to switch - but which distro deserves my trust?My impression is that Fedora is quite solid, but it lacks a lot of useful "commercial" applications which you have to find in suitable form elsewhere on the web.My impression is that Debian is quite solid and I am impressed with distros like DSL - simply because they pack a lot of punch for their size. I like Ubuntu a lot too - it seems to have selected the best from Debian.Peanuts/Alinux is cute. It is missing a few aplications I like but they are easy-to-get stuff.I have never been able to make friends with Mand*. A lot of people seem to like it but for some reason, I have never been able to install it properly. SAM works very nicely...Suse/Novell seems to be the best "commercial" choice nowadays. For some reason, many companies think that if they pay for their software, they will be able to complain better... I still don't like the way they try to hide things and make it awkward to do unusual stuff - almost like M$.Sure, there's still M$ out there somewhere. For many people, that is the only access they have to the rest of the world. We certainly need a simple, easy-to-install distro for these people that doesn't get lost in the details or licences.I'd like to hear your suggestions for this free and easy distro. If you can name one now - please do so.From reading a bunch of comments, it seems that many people, just like me, are looking around for something new. This will certainly cause these top-of-the-pops listings to give us a distorted view of the actual use of Linux. My guess is that any small distro that looks good in DW will get downloaded to play with, but how many people end up actually using them? Again, I'd love to see your comments on that.So, finally, when is the next release of Slackware coming out? I need to find out if it's worth waiting for or not.106 • Just switch desktop distro (by Alan Moser on 2005-07-14 09:48:36 GMT from United States)
well after using Ubuntu since the 4.10 pre-realeses, I decided to give Suse a honest try on my desktop. Let me tell you, Ubuntu is good, but Suse 9.3 is the most professonal desktop out there. Every thing that is in Suse 9.3 works (execpt for Kpilot, but that is a KDE issue, not Suse). I really like the speed increase in Suse, I know that we I used 9.1/9.2 on my test box, it was slow as hell. That is not the case with Suse 9.3, it is alot quicker. I would recomend installing this distro, I think that they got is right this time.

~Alan

P.S. Why can't they tie YOU into the installation media sources, I mean, places like pacman, when they update, I don't want to have to open yast to update it.107 • Re: Slackware and all the others (by Ariszló on 2005-07-14 11:40:36 GMT from Hungary)
DavidR wrote: What worries me more and more is the lack of news from Slackware.

How about these:

http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386 (where the latest news is three days old)http://www.userlocal.com/ (1 day old)http://www.linuxpackages.net/ (Firefox 1.0.5 added yesterday)http://dropline-gnome.sourceforge.net/http://gsb.freerock.org/http://gware.sourceforge.net/etc.108 • Re: Slackware and all the others (by Ariszló on 2005-07-14 11:40:36 GMT from Hun (by DavidR on 2005-07-14 13:13:46 GMT from Germany)
Ariszló wrote: "How about these:"and a list of security update messages and gnome-variant messages (which Patrick has decided to avoid for now).The kind of news I was interested in is more in line with what other distros are doing, probably under market pressure. They are providing us with the latest and greatest neatly packaged for download and installation. OK. I know it's a lot of work to prepare this kind of release and time has been a scarce commodity lately so what would really keep us fans loyal is something like a message that says when the next major release will become available.Have you seen any messages like that??109 • Re: Slackware and all the others (by Ariszló on 2005-07-14 16:53:51 GMT from Hungary)
No, but I wouldn't say that an upgrade to KDE 3.4.1 (available since Jun 12) is just a security update.110 • FC4 (by Anonymous on 2005-07-14 18:04:22 GMT from United States)
The installer is the biggest pain I've had in a long time and the help is less than helpful. Most of the problems are the same as in FC3 but is a bit better. At least the boot sector bug is fixed that is if you don't want to multi boot. The LDA bug is a almost insurmountable with a dual boot but it can be done if you remember to turn it back on after the install boot. But the instaler says it is going to boot (after grub change) but doesn't then does at a weird time. It then starts the install over again from the beginning. The custom partioner makes the first partion number 2 then the second number 1. That causes a booting from a sector > 8gb error until you switch the partions around because of the LDA error.

On my install the first time it came up in a messed up video mode but thankfully when I rebooted I was able to type in 800x600 then all was OK. It didn't go into grub first until after I ran up2date and rebooted. Then up2date quit working, it says try again later or give us money for a better connection. I think it might of switched it to a RH server or something.

It seems to run slow (like Mandriva) and looks like it has nothing special other than the menu on top instead of bottom.SimplyMepis is still better.

Scott111 • Is Cobind Desktop still considered active? (by Canadian Penguin on 2005-07-14 21:13:43 GMT from Canada)
The last release was 0.2beta in June04.

It should be flagged as inactive, unless it is taking the Debian path.

:P112 • Debian security (by wouter on 2005-07-15 00:12:56 GMT from Belgium)
No bad feelings, but last weeks article about the failure of Debian security was perhaps coming across slightly more serious than it was meant -- more as a fundamental or lasting problem instead of an annoying but rather mild temporary issue. And since stability and reliability are amongst Debian's top priorities, it's better to get things straight about the issue being solved rather than to leave lingering doubts about Debian's togetherness.113 • Debian Pure/Knoppix 4.0 (by Welkiner on 2005-07-15 05:11:24 GMT from United States)
Debian Pure .01 was a total failure for me...but yesterday I noticed that Debian Pure .02 is available, so I gave it a try, worked without a hitch. Very basic, but it seems very good!...and it's only .02. Can't wait for 1.0!

Has anyone heard andy hints as to when Knoppix 4.0 (Mini & Maxi) will be available for ISO download? Klaus said soon at LinuxTag on June 27th, but since then I haven't seen a word on any of the Knoppix forums.

wb114 • RE: Debian Pure/Knoppix 4.0 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-07-15 14:17:42 GMT from Italy)
"Has anyone heard andy hints as to when Knoppix 4.0 (Mini & Maxi) will be available for ISO download? Klaus said soon at LinuxTag on June 27th, but since then I haven't seen a word on any of the Knoppix forums."

I used the torrent which was provided here and it was fine (it defaults to German but it is very easy to choose another language at boot time):

http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386116 • Fedora Core 4 sound broken (by Gonk at 2005-07-16 05:24:39 GMT from Australia)
Something is broken with audio support for es1371 in FC4. My Soundblaster Vibra 128 works fine in Fedora up to FC3, but doesn't work in FC4. I've tried many suggestions in the forums but with no result. It looks like a nice distribution, but isn't usable as a desktop OS if something as simple as sound doesn't work.117 • Fedora Core 4 (by bullethead on 2005-07-16 21:12:33 GMT from United States)
I have been extremely pleased with Fedora Core 4. I don't know what the hell is to complain about.118 • Mandriva (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-07-16 22:48:55 GMT from Italy)
Still no news?119 • FC4 (by gilboa on 2005-07-17 00:51:28 GMT from Israel)
First of all, I should point out that FC4 *is* bleeding edge. One should expect problems once you live on the edge.

Now for the distro itself. I've been using RH on both my home machines and work machines/servers since RedHat 5.x (with only FC1 missing due to excessive bugs compared to RH9) and I've recently started the transitions to FC4. (Most of my machines still run FC3)

A couple of thoughts:* I'm currently testing FC4/64 on my home dual Opteron workstation.* I've yet to crash the machine. (I once Xid'ed the machine while playing Doom3; However, Xid's result from nVidia driver bugs/problems)* Of the 5 bugs I reported, 2 have been fixed (in stable), 1 is pending fix (in testing) and 2 have yet to be fixed. Considering the "free" nature of Fedora core, I'm pretty impressed. * Palm sync still doesn't work. (Fix is pending)* lvm2 support under Anaconda is working *great*. system-config-lvm is still missing features. (Console tools work just fine).* lvm2 failed to initialize twice, causing a kernel panic during reboot, though a simple reboot after the panic solved the problem. I'm still looking into ways to debug this before reporting a bug.* No comments on Xen. (Xen x86-64 support is still in the alpha stage).* MP3 support is easy to come by, once you configure yum correctly. (Download freshrpms yum support rpm, install rpm, yum update)* Yumes (yum GUI frontend) work just fine.* KDE 3.4.1 is working just fine.* Hopefully FC5 will mark the transition from up2date (broken as hell since FC2) to yum frontend with full Anaconda to extra integration. (Hence the intended 9 month long release cycle)

In general, if you are a current FC3 user and your FC3 setup is stable, I'd suggest you wait a couple of weeks before upgrading. FC4, like FC2 and FC3 before it needs some time to mature.

Gilboa121 • @DavidR (by Max on 2005-07-17 11:14:31 GMT from Australia)
"I'd like to hear your suggestions for this free and easy distro. If you can name one now - please do so."

Try Arch... Its brilliant...

I liked Slackware until i realised Pat is a control freak... He is not officially releasing GNOME anymore just because its too hard/time-consuming to compile... What about letting someone else do it.... Also, when he was sick, the packages were being updated by just two people, and still, they were being watched over by him like it was national security... FREAK

My other main favorite is Gentoo. Suse is my favorite of the "commercial" ones... Debian is cool but too 386-ish for my liking... FEDORA for me just means one word: BLOAT. And Ubuntu is cool, the easiest thing yet...122 • Fedora Core 4 i386 'Final' (by yeti on 2005-07-17 18:53:26 GMT from United States)
I've been a RedHat user since 4.2, but I've always had to suffer four problems with each latest and greatest upgrade:1. The new video (for my hardware) is broken;2. My multiple boot loader is wrecked;3. My legacy isa modem is never recognized and not working; and4. I have to work around a gnome-centric design to get KDE re-established.Fedora Core 4 is no exception.Once working, it's a gem, but re-inventing the wheel is getting tiresome.123 • @Max (by Ariszló on 2005-07-17 20:54:07 GMT from Hungary)
Max wrote: I liked Slackware until i realised Pat is a control freak...

Yes, he is. And he is doing excellent job.

Max wrote: He is not officially releasing GNOME anymore just because its too hard/time-consuming to compile... What about letting someone else do it....

He himself recommends GWARE and GNOME SlackBuild.124 • RE: What went wrong with Fedora Core 4? (by FC4 Anonymous user. on 2005-07-18 01:27:43 GMT from United States)
Hello: We should all undertstand that every new release of a Linux distro, resolves problems, bring the latestest packages, and sometimes is not as good as the previous one,For FC4, I find it excellent, stable as a rock.I also regret that some good packages are gone, I would have preffered to store them on a fith CD optional, and gone as far as fill a whole 4.5 Gb DVD. The DVD version is only 3.2 GB !

And yes, sooner rather than later Fedora should have better configuration tools,GUI based somewhat like Mandriva, Suse and probably others.

But what I would really like to see is a set of configuration tools, GUI based, (GNOME and/or KDE) common to all Linux platforms, at least for the front end!I also would like these tools, to be "not too magic", and tell us, which configuration files have beben modified and how!

KCONTROL would be a good place to start, mostly because there is already some config capabilities there, but GNOME is getting excellent (with FC4) and possibly could also be a great front-end.

Ladislav: also rating a distro, with only one grading, is not enough.There is need for multiple ratings, for example:STABILITY.CONFIG TOOLS QUALITYQUALITY OF PACKAGES [UP TO date]: QUALITY OF PACKGES [stability]QUALITY OF DOCUMENTATIONQUALITY OF COMPLIANCE WITH LSB RECOMENDATIONS:QUALITY OF MULTIMEDIAQUALITY OF OFFICEQUALITY OF HARDWARE SUPPORT.QUALITY OF NETWORKINGQUALITY OF SERVERS TOOLSAnd more....

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: WHAT THIS DISTRO BRINGS TO THE LINUX NAD OPEN SOURCE WHICH WAS BADLY MISSING.(Need a better naming, of course!)...

From one I have seen FC4 would be close to the top on stability, hardware support, and low on CONFIG TOOLS (hard to use for "non geek".)Would also rate quite well on Office and desktop publishing.Etc....I am using SuSe 9.3 and FC4, and must say that contrary to last vintage, I am for this round happier this time with FC4, than Suse 9.3, nonwitstanding SUSE much superior GUI conguration tools.

I hope I was not too long. ===125 • FC-4 (by HLS on 2005-07-18 03:09:48 GMT from United States)
Fedora Core 4.0 is the first Linux distro that had my Sony SDM-HS74P LCD monitor on file for display options. The appearance is superb and very professional, but the Internet access time is ridiculous, taking at least 13 seconds as compared to less than three seconds for Xandros 3.0, Linspire 5.0, Ubuntu 5.04, and Knoppix 4.0 that I tried in both the live and installed versions over ADSL.